I buried a goldfish in a margarine tub,
we were always killing goldfish
by neglect,
spending weekends with our grandparents
letting things die at home.
my sister had birds that came in boxes
and over-dosed in glue in her wardrobe,
we buried them in the rubbish,
yellow feathers caught among baked beans
and tea bags
spilling their leafy guts.
I buried myself every night
woke up with my head
at the foot of the bed
bound by blankets,
believing the world to have gone
dark, tight and airless.
we buried our dog in the back-garden
my brother scraped her with a shovel off the road, nothing but a pelt,
a stiff board of fur
then we moved house.
I buried my grandmother and grandfather
and we never went back to the grave.
I had to bury a butter bean
in cotton wool
in a glass jar
to watch the roots grow,
we were told to keep turning it, curling
the root that had always to go
down,
I tortured that butter bean
into spirals,
I watched it both buried
and exposed.
I buried Sean Traynor
in the field behind the house,
I sat on him
so he couldn't move,
his head sprouting out of the ground,
screaming from mercy,
he was four years old,
later drunk and homeless in Miami
his parents had to cremate him
to take him home.
The field got buried by the motor way
the whole area got shifted and buried
by that motor way.
I left on the mail boat,
I buried my gloom
in the bar,
the vibrating engines shaking
every tiny thing I had
inside of me.
I came back year after year for burials,
the older generation
gradually creeping underground.
we gathered only for burials,
in our cheap good suits
crumpled from the journey,
children turned emigrants
parents turned grandparents
the ground that would take them
could not keep us.